Back in the air

Jennifer Weil, an accountant with Ernst & Young, looks through her bag Friday in a cab headed to O'Hare International Airport.

Tribune photo by Jill Toyoshiba

Tribune photo by Jill Toyoshiba

Robert L. KaiserTribune staff reporter

As her plane nosed into the sky above O'Hare International Airport, Jennifer Weil's palms became so sweaty they stuck to the Glamour magazine in her lap. ("Go Ahead, Face Your Fears!" advised the article on page 149.)

Weil, 28, an accountant with Ernst & Young in Chicago, was traveling for the first time since the terrorist attacks Sept. 11--a business trip that took her from her office in the Sears Tower and transported her, with a vague sense of dread, into war-torn Manhattan.

As smoke hung over the still-smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center, it was time to get back to business as usual--even if that meant concentrating on minutiae in the shadow of enormity, the challenge confronting workers soldiering on in a world knocked horribly askew.

Fear engendered by the attacks has made a return to normalcy slow and difficult--especially in the business community, where men and women like Weil face personal journeys while traveling for work.

Weil attended quarterly strategy meetings Monday at which more than two dozen Ernst & Young partners from the United States, Canada and Britain gathered around a long conference table on the 26th floor of a Midtown high-rise a few miles north of Ground Zero.

They drank coffee, ate bagels and mingled before the meeting, their conversation invariably turning to protracted experiences with tighter airport security--"Unbelievable," said Kerrie D. MacPherson, a partner in the firm's Toronto office--and the strange feelings associated with being in New York.

"I don't think I'm afraid of the traveling part. But I thought it would be eerie seeing the city--and it was," said Joanne F. Dunbar, another partner from Toronto.

Dunbar and MacPherson flew to New York on Sunday evening as twilight gave an otherworldly glow to the ruins of the Twin Towers.

Weil flew in on Friday, having planned to stay the weekend with longtime friends who live in a Battery Park high-rise a few blocks from the attack site.

"In the simplest terms, I'm just scared to see it," Weil said.

For all the time she spent traveling and walking through the blocked-off streets of New York, the moment when Weil first saw the wreckage of the site seemed sudden.

As she turned left from Beach Street onto Greenwich Street while walking to her friends' apartment Friday night, Weil stopped.

`Oh my God'

"Oh my God," she said, staring at the ghostly veil of smoke hanging against the illuminated night sky ahead.

"Welcome to the war zone," a National Guard soldier in camouflage said to her.

The meetings for which Weil traveled to New York are important for re-establishing contact with the firm's partners there, said Mike Ventling, a partner with the firm's Chicago office. He likened the feeling of isolation felt by New Yorkers after the attack to people living inside a bubble.

"They're all emotionally bruised," he said. "The whole concept of returning to normal is important for them."

A survey of businesses by the Business Travel Coalition, a lobbying organization representing some of the largest U.S. companies, found that 85 percent of the companies responding said they are allowing airline travel only if it is "mission critical."

"What's driving it, clearly, is safety," said Kevin Mitchell, the coalition's president. "A lot of these companies are sensitive to their employees being concerned, and a lot of messages have been sent out that said, `If you're not comfortable traveling, that's fine; there's not going to be any pressure from management.'"

Ventling, who attended the meeting in New York, said employees have been asked to curtail non-essential trips and travel is down 30 to 50 percent at the firm.

"If you walked the halls today and asked employees how many had traveled since Sept. 11, only a little more than half would say they have. It's usually quite a bit higher than that," he said.

Early Friday morning, before Weil left for New York, Ventling told her he had arranged for a car service to pick her up at LaGuardia in New York--a measure taken to make her feel more comfortable about the trip.

Then they discussed whether her 4 p.m. departure from O'Hare would put her in New York before nightfall.

"I'm scared to see it firsthand. I'd prefer to fly in when I can't see anything." Weil told him. She sighed when Ventling informed her that the sun probably still would be up when she landed in New York at 7 p.m.

At 12:30 p.m., Weil grabbed a laptop computer from her desk on the 13th floor of the Sears Tower, hooked it to her suitcase and rode the elevator down to the lobby.

Security guards stood all around. They had searched Weil's luggage when she got to work a few hours earlier, delaying her arrival on the 13th floor for five minutes.

Now, walking outside under a gloomy sky, Weil hailed a passing cab from the curb that used to be lined with waiting taxis but which for security reasons now is blocked off with barrels.

"I've definitely felt some apprehension about the trip, but not enough to keep me from going," she said. "I won't change plans I've made--not now, not yet."

Plenty of time

Weil gave herself plenty of time to make it through anticipated additional security at O'Hare, arriving at the airport three hours early in a cab that met uncommonly light Friday afternoon traffic.

She made it through check-in without a hitch--in fact, the woman at the counter almost forgot to check Weil's photo ID-- and breezed through the security checkpoint, which featured an added layer between the check-in counter and the metal detector: Somber workers again asked to see identification.

Then Weil strolled through the airport to Gate B1, her clothes rustling in the quiet concourse as she passed the sparsely populated waiting areas at gates for Kansas City, Columbus and Minneapolis.

This is how America gets back to normal.

"I'd trade the quiet for the confusion if it meant nothing ever had happened," Weil said.

When she booked the flight, she dreaded navigating O'Hare at rush hour on a Friday afternoon.

Now she found herself dreading the trip for an entirely different reason.

"I was a little worked up last night," Weil said.

But after spending the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur with family on the eve of her trip, she slept easily and deeply for the first night since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"For a couple weeks I was waking up in the middle of the night every night, like I'd had a bad dream that I couldn't remember," she said. "You just wake up and your heart's beating and you don't know why.

"But last night I was out like a light."

Because of mechanical problems, passengers finally boarded United Flight 678 a half-hour late. Weil settled into seat 21C and started to pull nervously at her newly cut hair.

During the next two hours in the air she wondered what it would be like waking up in New York in the morning; smiled at how trivial the stories in her magazine seemed; tried to imagine what it was like for all those people on the planes that crashed.

When the plane arrived in New York, the mechanical delay proved merciful: Night had fallen, shrouding the wreck of the Twin Towers.